Performance Management: Changing Behavior That Drives Organizational Effectiveness (part 9)

Maintaining Performance Improvement: Schedules of Reinforcement (part B)
by
Charles Lamson

Fixed Ratio

Fixed ratio (FR) refers to a set number of responses that must be made before reinforcement is received. Two common examples in the work setting are piecework and commissions. On piecework, employees are paid a given amount for each item or set of items they produce. Programmers may be paid by the job, not by the hours they work on it. Salespeople on commission may be paid a certain amount for each sale they make. In the average workplace, formal applications of fixed ratio schedules are hard to find because they are more difficult to track and generally require more monitoring and individual schedules. Nevertheless, employees on FR pay systems consistently outperform those on FI (fixed interval) by as much as 30 percent. Allyson & Kolko (1982) in a survey of studies on this subject state:

A host of experimental work from both analogue and actual work tasks consistently points to the relative superiority of a payment system based on a specific piece-rate requirement (p. 46).

More recently in a review of studies about method of pay and performance, Bucklin and Dickinson (2002) state:

Taken together the data suggest that, at least for the parameters investigated to date, the most critical determinant of performance is the ratio schedule contingency between performance and pay; that is, a relationship in which individuals can earn a specified amount of money for the number of work units they complete (p. 46).

Fixed ratio (FR) schedules are often written as FR2, FR6, FR8, and so on. The number after the designation denotes how much behavior is required to receive reinforcement. For example, a child who must complete six pages of homework before going out to play would be on an FR6 schedule.

Most applications of the Premack Principle employ FR schedules: When I do X, then I will do Y. When I complete this tedious task, I will spend an hour on a fun task. This is a very effective time-management technique. When your mother told you to do your work before your play, she was trying to teach you the value of FR schedules. Fixed ratio schedules are associated with task orientation and efficiency. This schedule is ideal for business. An increasing number of companies are moving to pay for performance in recognition of the superiority of FR over traditional interval-based pay schedules. However, we might add that many of the so-called pay for performance schemes are conceived and implemented without knowledge of schedules of reinforcement research and as such fail to deliver the performance of which they are capable.

A characteristic usually associated with FR schedules is a pause in performance following reinforcement. This pause is called a post-reinforcement pause (PRP). A post-reinforcement pause is found in both FR and FI (Fixed interval refers to a schedule of reinforcement used within operant conditioning. ... So, a fixed interval schedule of reinforcement happens when some sort of reinforcement occurs after a set amount of time and impacts behavior.)schedules because in these intermittent schedules, reinforcement never follows reinforcement. In other words, a behavior immediately following reinforcement will never be reinforced on FI and FR schedules. On FI schedules some time must pass before reinforcement is available and on FR schedules, more than one response must occur before reinforcement is available.

The difference in the PRP on an FR schedule is that when the pause is over, the person goes all out. Fixed ratio performance is sometimes referred to as all-or-nothing performance. Of course, on fixed interval schedules, the person may only need to make one response at the end of the pause to produce the reinforcer.

The length of the pause on an FR schedule is a function of the size of the ratio, just as the length of the pause on an FI schedule is a function of the length of the pause on an FI schedule is a function of the length of the interval. On a given performance there would be a longer pause on FR100 than there would be on FR10. This phenomenon can be seen when people working on a project day and night for several weeks take a couple of days off when it is completed. Writers, directors, and others who work on long-term projects may take weeks, months, or even years before starting another. One way of characterizing the PRP is as a celebration of the accomplishment. Organizations that take time to celebrate accomplishments are usually high performing organizations.

If managers do not know about this characteristic of FR, they may get an unrealistic picture of the performers. If they happen to inspect during a PRP, they might conclude that their employees are lazy or off task, when in reality they may be just the opposite. Many mangers think that taking time to celebrate is a waste because it takes time that could otherwise be spent working. However, they discover that when victories or accomplishments are celebrated, people work harder to get the celebration and work harder following the celebration than they would have done without it.

Although FI schedules also produce a pause following reinforcement, that pause differs in character from the FR pause. On FI schedules, the performer is waiting for the next occasion for reinforcement since there is nothing he can do to rush the reinforcer. On FR schedules, the performers might be said to be resting before beginning again, or even celebrating the previous accomplishment; but in any case, the performer knows that the sooner he starts again, the sooner reinforcement will occur.

*SOURCE: PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT: CHANGING BEHAVIOR THAT DRIVES ORGANIZATIONAL EFFECTIVENESS, 4TH ED., 2004, PGS. 85-87*

end